As @Benjamin_Todd mentioned, GWWC also does report on pledged donations and donations made.
However, Giving What We Can’s core metric on a day-to-day basis is the number of active members who are keeping their pledge. This is in part because the organisation aim is “to create a culture where people are inspired to give more, and give more effectively” (a community building project) and we see pledges as a more correlated and stable reflection of that than the noisy donation data (which a single billionaire can massively skew in any given year). This aim is in service of the organisations’ mission to “Inspire donations to the world’s most effective organisations”. We believe this mission is important in making progress on the world’s most pressing problems (whatever they might be throughout the lifetime of the members).
Because GWWC is cause-diverse and not the authority on impact evaluations of the charities its members donate to is hard to translate this into exact impact numbers across our membership. We do however regularly look at where our members are donating and in our impact analysis try to benchmark this to equivalent money donated to top charities. We do plan to improve our reporting of impact where it is possible (e.g. donations to GiveWell’s top charities) – however, this will never be a complete picture.
Note:I did not choose the mission of GWWC and do not speak on behalf of the board nor the founders. However, this is my best understanding of the mission and the core metrics as required for my day-to-day operations. It is also a mission I believe to be impactful not just through direct donation moved but through indirect factors (such as moral circle expansion, movement building, and changing the incentives for charities to be more impact focused because they see more donors seeking impact).
As @Benjamin_Todd mentioned, GWWC also does report on pledged donations and donations made.
However, Giving What We Can’s core metric on a day-to-day basis is the number of active members who are keeping their pledge. This is in part because the organisation aim is “to create a culture where people are inspired to give more, and give more effectively” (a community building project) and we see pledges as a more correlated and stable reflection of that than the noisy donation data (which a single billionaire can massively skew in any given year). This aim is in service of the organisations’ mission to “Inspire donations to the world’s most effective organisations”. We believe this mission is important in making progress on the world’s most pressing problems (whatever they might be throughout the lifetime of the members).
Because GWWC is cause-diverse and not the authority on impact evaluations of the charities its members donate to is hard to translate this into exact impact numbers across our membership. We do however regularly look at where our members are donating and in our impact analysis try to benchmark this to equivalent money donated to top charities. We do plan to improve our reporting of impact where it is possible (e.g. donations to GiveWell’s top charities) – however, this will never be a complete picture.
Note: I did not choose the mission of GWWC and do not speak on behalf of the board nor the founders. However, this is my best understanding of the mission and the core metrics as required for my day-to-day operations. It is also a mission I believe to be impactful not just through direct donation moved but through indirect factors (such as moral circle expansion, movement building, and changing the incentives for charities to be more impact focused because they see more donors seeking impact).